A Irish iPhone hacker and beta tester discovered the new tethering settings in the OS v3.0. This is the tethering home screen. (Source: Apple Insider)

The new iPhone OS brings the possibility of tethering if carriers approve it

With the official announcement of the iPhone OS v3.0 there has been much excitement over the new features, which include MMS support, copy cut and paste, turn-by-turn directions (via third-party hardware), FM radio support (via third-party hardware), and new Bluetooth support. One feature that didn't receive much attention was tethering.

Apple said at the press event for the new OS that it would be allowing tethering and has built the functionality into the new OS. However, whether or not you can use this functionality is entirely dependent on whether your carrier chooses to support it, and thus far AT&T, the official iPhone carrier in the U.S., has announced no plans to do so.

Still, those interested in how the tethering will work will take interest in this news. Irish programmer Steve Troughton, an iPhone hacker and OS v3.0 beta tester, became the first to see the new tethering features. He accidentally unlocked the features when overwriting his carrier, O2's, Carrier Settings file.

The result was an options screen for a tethered connection. The connection could be turned on by either connecting via USB or Bluetooth and then sliding the a slide bar to "on". When tethered the phone displays a message beneath the clock -- "Internet Tethering" -- to remind the user that their phone is tethered and is consuming data.

For some carriers outside the U.S., like Rogers Wireless (Canada), tethering should be a breeze to support, as they already offer tethered connections to their smart phone models. AT&T, however, has not confirmed a time table or stated that it has any concrete plans for such a scheme yet on the iPhone.

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